The Illumination of Ursula Flight

by Anna-Marie Crowhurst

  I went through the gate and around to the back of the house, lifting up the latch on the door and pushing it open to find Goodsoule kneading a great slab of dough, her broad freckled arms dusted all over with flour, and Mary vigorously sweeping the floor with a besom. I stepped over the threshold, dropping snow all over the floor, feeling the heat from the great hearth on my face. The fire was spitting most merrily, and the little cottage quite warm. Instantly I had a great fit of coughing.

  ‘What’s this, Ursula? Why, you’ll catch your death!’ cried Goodsoule, coming to me and brushing the snow from my legs and shoulders. ‘We thought not to see you, for your ma sent word you had took bad, and could not be with my Mary today.’

  ‘’Tis true I have got a cold,’ I sniffed miserably, ‘but it is so dull without you, I thought to come here.’ I coughed again. I hated to go to my bed and be bored.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘You have come to us at a godly time. The babes are asleep, Johnny and Harry are helping their father, and Mary and I are all but done in setting things to rights.’

  She nodded at the little stool by the fire and I took heed of her and drew it up to sit upon, holding my limbs out to thaw them, in turn, while they busied at their work. It gave me a rosy sort of feeling to watch them occupied thus, letting the cottage smells – the wood-smoke; the baking bread; the drying herbs which dangled in stiff little bunches from the rafters – float over me. Then I leant my head in my hands, for the effort of coming out of doors had caught up with me. I sneezed, and groaned a little.

  ‘I think the fresh air has done me ill,’ I sniffed.

  Goodsoule came and felt my head and neck and cheek. I wiped my hand across my face, for the flux had started running down my lip again. ‘I beg your pardon, Goodsoule,’ I said. ‘I cannot stop it issuing forth, for my head is full of the stuff to overflowing. Some of it is green.’

  ‘Horrid girl!’ said Mary.

  ‘I will make a posset and you will drink it off like a good girl and be cured,’ said Goodsoule. She went into the larder and came out of it, and set about plucking things from the herb bundles, and setting a copper pan of water to boiling, giving instructions to Mary all the while.

  ‘What is it?’ I said, when she set the little pot before me, which had steam coming off it and a sweet, poisonous sort of smell that was sharp in my nostrils.

  ‘Mistletoe, which is a plant of the sun in Aries and being hot and dry treats cold and wet illnesses of the head,’ she said, knowing I liked to hear her wisdoms. ‘And there is comfrey to cure what ails ye. And rose to keep ye calm and fair.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, drinking it down and spitting at the taste. ‘I would like to know how to make ill people well, for it seems a great art.’

  ‘Aye, though you would not think so, to hear it in the village,’ said Goodsoule, taking up a stool beside me. ‘Bless you, child, you must not repeat what you have heard in this house. For there are those that think any curing done by a woman is witchcraft, and any herb gathering is spell casting, and any chanting is the Devil’s lore.’

  ‘But that’s mighty foolish,’ I said, crossing my fingers and swearing my oath. ‘Do people want to die?’

  ‘No, they do not – but they are more afeard of the black arts than they are of dying and going to see their God in heaven, which is why they hanged poor Mistress Purvice last winter.’

  ‘She tried to cure the baker with a toasted toad,’ said Mary. ‘But she only gave him warts.’ Goodsoule hushed her.

  ‘I would hear of your learnings, Goodsoule,’ I said. ‘For they are different to the ones I get from Father, and would distract me from my cold,’ guessing rightly that she could not help but indulge me.

  ‘You have a cool complexion,’ she said, holding up my chin and gazing at my face. Her fingers were rough on my cheek, and I thought then how different they were from the soft hands of my mother, which were smooth and white, but rarely touched me. ‘The right sort of fare can remedy a troubled set of humours, and stop the body yielding to agues and distempers. So you must eat up all your viandes and drink down your milk, every day.’

  ‘I will,’ I croaked.

  ‘You must avoid winds, for they carry miasmas and so are treacherous,’ said Goodsoule. ‘And changeable weather, too, is bad for a body. You know that snow and rain are the worst, for the wetness brings rheums, dropsies and quotidian agues – and colds.’

  ‘’Tis no wonder you took ill, Ursula,’ said Mary. ‘The way you tramp about the countryside in the snow with your gown and cloak wetted right up to your waist.’

  ‘Aye,’ I said. ‘I rue it now.’

  When I had had my posset, Goodsoule returned to her chores and Mary and I retired to the corner of the kitchen near the larder, so that we might whisper our secrets, and be warmed by the smoky hearth.

  ‘You will not guess who I saw down at the green, when I went by there the other day,’ said Mary, as soon as her mother was gone. Her eyes were lit up and dancing.

  ‘Who?’ I said. ‘Tell me!’

  ‘Well, ’tis someone you know,’ she teased. ‘A boy... a handsome boy... that you know... well... very well indeed, I warrant.’

  ‘I do not know,’ I said priggishly, though I could feel my colour rising in my face.

  ‘’Twas your kissing-fellow, Samuel!’ she said. ‘And I called out to him and, being with some bigger boys he put his head down, and pretended not to know me.’

  I knew that I blushed rosy red and she laughed to see it and prodded at me in fun.

  ‘Tell me again what it was like to feel his lips on yours,’ she said.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘there was a queer sort of thrill in my belly all the while and something that fluttered and leapt in my chest... it flared up when he put his hands about my waist, and warmed me... all over – do you remember him doing that?’

  ‘Aye!’ said Mary, her voice rising. ‘And I saw him bend you backwards – and press his body on yours!’

  ‘Hush,’ I hissed, poking her. ‘Your mother will hear and then where will we be?’

  ‘Oh, Ma understands lovers’ secrets, I am sure,’ said Mary wisely. ‘Besides, you have done naught but acted in a play.’

  ‘Imagine if my mother were to know we played with strange boys, when we do not even know who their mothers and fathers are or where they are from!’ The thought of it excited me, in truth.

  ‘They are from good families, that much was plain,’ said Mary in her sensible way.

  ‘I thought him a very nice boy,’ I said, the image of his twisted-up smile suddenly in my head. ‘Though I was not so sure of his friend, who seemed very idle and given to preening. I cannot see why we may not play with them again for this winter. It is so cold and dreary I am of a mind to take up Lady Cassandra again and write more of her, and I am ever in need of actors. I did think Samuel good at being the manservant, and so for that reason I should like him to play with us again.’

  ‘Oh aye,’ said Mary. ‘Well ’tis all for the good, for I did not tell you what happened next.’

  ‘Next?’

  ‘After he – Samuel – put his head down. I thought he had gone away with his playfellows, and paid him no mind, but then he came loping up to me.’

  I clutched at her. ‘He did not!’

  ‘Did so. And he says, pinching me at the elbow, “I am gone from my aunt’s house tonight and cannot tarry, but I will return afore Easter.” Then he says: “Tell Ursula, if she may slip away, to meet me at the Rhyme Tree at noon on Ash Wednesday, for I would dearly like to see her.”’

  ‘Nay!’ I was red again.

  ‘Aye!’ said Mary, her voice getting evermore bird-like with the excitement of it.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘What shall I do?’

  ‘Why you must go to him, Ursey, for I think he wants to be sweethearts.’

  ‘It is not ’til April though...’

  ‘Oh, Samuel,’ said Mary then, in a slow, exaggerated sort of way. ‘You are such a good actor. How well you speak the
lines that I crafted ’specially for ye.’ She flicked up an imaginary fan.

  ‘Stop it,’ I shouted. ‘That is not what I did, not at all!’

  ‘Will we be tenderhearts, Samuel?’ she lisped and, when I protested, began tickling at my armpits until I screamed out and we fell onto the floor in a rough-and-tumble and Goodsoule came and scolded us for waking the babby, but all we could do was laugh helplessly. The talk of romance had lifted our spirits right up to the rafters, and we did not want to come down.

  X

  TRYST

  In which I am distracted by thoughts of flirtation

  Though I tried to distract myself with reading and my lessons, I found that my thoughts had begun to turn to Samuel and his long-ago kissing. I mused on what might happen if I went to meet him as he had asked and found myself thinking of his mouth, which set me to blushing, and my father asked why I was staring out of the window, instead of working at my arithmetic. Goodsoule wondered at my inability to thread the buckles on my shoes.

  ‘I have been a-pondering,’ I said to Mary, one wet afternoon, when we had finished an energetic game of Lanterloo, which had made us both hungry, and so we were feasting on currant-biscuits, discovered under a cloth in the larder. ‘I think I will try to discover what Samuel is about, for if I must marry, I would not mind if it were Samuel. Or someone much like him.’

  ‘Well now, Mrs!’ she said, letting some biscuit fall out of her mouth and onto her smock. ‘He might not ask you though,’ she said, chewing. ‘For you are not even sweethearts and he may have found another in the months it has been. You must be sweethearts first, if ye are to marry.’

  ‘Must we?’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘A boy may ask a girl to be his sweetheart and then they will promise to keep only unto each other. Well, until a handsomer one comes along and then she may pretend she never said it at all. Kitty did that with the ostler’s boy, and weren’t he scowling every time he laid eyes on her in church, and didn’t she hold her head up proud, for she had already been asked by Jack Browning if he could court her and he has five pound a year, and so she didn’t give a fig.’

  ‘Kitty is so beautiful,’ I said wistfully.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘But she has a devil of a temper. It is well she keeps with my aunt, for I cannot abide her screaming.’

  ‘It does not matter if you are the biggest crosspatch that ever lived, if you have fine eyes and a pretty face,’ I said.

  Mary poked me at this. ‘You are a pretty enough maid yourself and you are of noble family besides and so shall make a good match when the time is right, my ma says.’

  ‘Your mother is kind to me,’ I said. I thought of Father and Mother and the babbies. ‘I do not know if I should want to wed for a good while yet. It seems a famous lot of work and there is not much making merry.’

  Mary laughed. ‘We all have to wed!’

  ‘I do not see why,’ I said. ‘My Great-Aunt Pomfrey never did, and she always seemed a very happy woman, for she was always riding horses and sketching and doing a great many things, until she died.’

  ‘Of drink!’ said Mary. ‘For Kitty told me she was an old maid with a shrivelled womb and a coddled mind – and she drank herself to death.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Mayhap you shall marry Samuel,’ said Mary, clearing away the crumbs, lest Eliza should notice and give her a slapping. ‘And be happy all your days.’

  ‘Mayhap,’ I said. ‘But I would rather have a horse.’

  Spring had come to us at last, and it was the sort that was made of all weathers. In any one day it might be ice-cold and windy – and then the sun would come out, as if naught had gone before. On the appointed day of my meeting with Samuel, it had rained heavily all the morning, me peering out of the window wondering how I might slip out to the wood in such weather, for it would look mighty strange to be heading away from the house on such a day. Catherine, momentarily escaped from Goodsoule, came to stand with me by the window.

  ‘We cannot play while it rains, Ursey.’

  ‘No we cannot,’ I said, putting my arm around her still fat child’s body, ‘for it would wet us most thoroughly and we should grow ill.’

  ‘And then we shall take to our beds and expire,’ she said, her little round face screwed up into a scowl. ‘For Reggie told me so.’

  ‘For shame, do not listen to him!’ I said, dragging her up into my lap and petting her head, for she had now begun to whimper. ‘He is a naughty boy and a terrible tease, besides. You shalt not catch cold nor die neither, but live long and merry, as all we Flights shall, for we are hardy stock and not like to succumb to maladies.’

  That seemed to soothe her, for she quietened, and got down, and went back to the nursery, her little thumb hooked in her mouth, her soft leather booties scuffing the ground. I saw that the rain had stopped, and the weather began to brighten. Though it was still but eleven of the clock and I would be early, I threw on my rain-cloak and stepped out of the house as quickly as I might, in sudden fear that somebody might call for me and I miss Samuel altogether. It was almost warm, now the sun was out, and I squelched across the meadow towards the path to Bear Wood with something lifting in my heart, for the almanac had foretold today an auspicious one, and a thrill was running through me at the thought of what may come.

  In the distance, a flash of blue picked out by the sun, the dark shape of a figure coming over the hill and across the field, from the village. As the figure neared, I saw with a panic that it was my mother, with her basket. I did not turn a hair (though I had thought her safely in the house) but slowed my step and, affecting a careless attitude, bent down to pick a few of the meadow flowers that clustered here and there.

  ‘What do you do out of doors, Ursula?’ she said, sounding cross, her cheeks rose-red with the exertion of walking. ‘Dawdling about the meadow when there are instruments to be practised and linens to be tidied? ’Tis not what I expect of my eldest child.’

  ‘I – I just thought to get myself a posy. And one for you, Mother,’ I said, holding out what I had hastily wrenched out of the earth, which had a dandelion in it, and soil clinging to its stems.

  ‘Not now,’ she said, pushing my hand from her. ‘I am expecting visitors and have been walking about trying to find Lisbet, who had gone off to get a shoulder from the butcher, but has not come back, and so we are all in a quandary.’

  ‘I can go after her!’ I said, gazing at her with my eyes very wide.

  ‘Nay, nay,’ she said. ‘You must come inside and change your gown, for you are not fit to be seen in that one, and there’s mud on your shoes.’

  Brushing the soil from my palms I followed her into the house, with a drooping head, wondering if, even as I did so, Samuel watched me go from the shade of the tree, and wondered why I did not come.

  But the luck the almanac had predicted held, for no sooner had Goodsoule wrenched me into my gown, then came a message from the visitors saying one of them was took ill with a dropsy and, fearing it contagious, would rest themselves indoors. The clock had rung for half past twelve by the time I had extricated myself again, for my mother was going up and down the house, shouting at the waste of food. This time I took no chances, and broke into a run when I came to the patch of open meadow I must cross, my skirts held high above my ankles, my best shoes throwing up a spray of earth as I sprinted, for I had not had time to change them.

  I crashed into the wood, heeding little that my cloak caught on branches, and was pricked by a holly bush as I ran down the caked mud path, slowing as I came to our wishing tree, pawing at my hair, though I knew it was hopelessly disarranged. I stopped a little way off, so that I might catch my breath, and, having done so, walked briskly into the clearing.

  He was not there.

  I walked over to the tree and pressed my hand against its bark. It felt warm to the touch. Had Samuel lingered here, while he waited all this while? Misery invaded my body, for now what would I do for a sweetheart? And how wo
uld I see Samuel again? It was not fair. I kicked the tree.

  ‘Don’t blame him,’ came the voice behind me. ‘For it is not Monsieur Oak’s fault you are late and left me tarrying here all afternoon.’

  I could hardly turn around, before his hands were about my waist, and he twisting my body around to meet his, so that his open mouth met mine sideways on. I tried to push him away, for his hands were wandering upwards and I was afeard of my bosom being felt (it was not yet full-grown), but I forgot myself, and allowed him to push me gently back towards the tree, which he pressed me against with his hot, hard body; before touching his lips on mine, and trailing his mouth along my jaw. It seemed very advanced for a boy of his age, and I wondered at his boldness.

  ‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘Ursula.’

  I closed my eyes.

  We kissed and clutched at one another for what felt like an age, and though he kept trying to pull me downwards to lie on the floor, remembering my various talks with Mary on the topic of bundling, I kept my wits about me, and would not be moved from my safe spot against the tree. When he saw that he could not coerce me into romping, I felt his hands begin to wander downwards, and he trying to get under my skirts, though I murmured that he must not, and at the same time arched my neck back, and he brought his leg up under mine, and slid his hand under my skirt, stroking slowly right from my stockinged ankle to the top of my hot bare thigh, and as his fingers brushed downwards against my flesh I woke up a little from my stupor, and knew I must put a stop to things, before they got any more out of hand.

  ‘Nay,’ I said, twisting out from his embrace and stepping a few paces away from him. ‘I like your kissing but I cannot... I am but fourteen years old.’

  ‘Come, now,’ he said, taking my hand. ‘I will not hurt you. Forgive me,’ he said, seeing that my face had grown serious. ‘I forgot myself, as all men do, but I would not anger you, Urse. Let us talk awhile.’

  We stood then, and told each other all about our lives. I learnt that he was of a good family, but was not noble, and lived up at Gloucester when he was not with his aunt, and had four brothers and two sisters, and he missed his mother more than he could say. He liked to make merry with his brothers, and run races, and to play other games, and had a tutor for schooling and enjoyed reading his atlas and his history books too. At this I exclaimed, and told him of my studies with Father, and our latest studies of the heavens, and how I was named for the Great Bear, and he was greatly pleased with this, and the tale of my learning too, for he said he liked his women both pretty and clever. The conversation tailed off.